As an undergrad at MIT in the 1950s, Lynn Sykes ’59, SM ’60, became interested in the theory of continental drift, which held that the world’s great landmasses had wandered across Earth over time. The ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Are we alone, and if so, why? So far, the search for ...

Ancient plate tectonics in the Archean period differs from modern plate tectonics in the Phanerozoic period because of the higher mantle temperatures inside the early Earth, the thicker basaltic crust ...

Seismic waves from earthquakes have always offered a window into Earth’s hidden interior. For decades, researchers believed they had a firm grasp on how these waves revealed the rocky mantle’s secrets ...

For decades, scientists have accepted a particular theory regarding the evolution Earth’s plate tectonics, but a recent study published in Nature Geoscience could defy this as a team of researchers ...

The seemingly stable regions of the Earth's continental plates -- the so-called stable cratons -- have suffered repetitive deformation below their crust since their formation in the remote past, ...

His framework offered a new way to think about continental drift and revolutionized the study of earthquakes, volcanoes and evolution. By Clay Risen W. Jason Morgan, who in 1967 developed the theory ...

W. Jason Morgan, who in 1967 developed the theory of plate tectonics -- a framework that revolutionized the study of earthquakes, volcanoes and the slow, steady shift of the continents across the ...